


the edge of words

by mstigergun



Series: Inglorious [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Grooming, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Sexual Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 20:45:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4760450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mstigergun/pseuds/mstigergun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i><b>memory</b></i> (n): mid-13c., "recollection; awareness, consciousness," from Anglo-French <i>memorie</i> (Old French memoire, 11c., "mind; remembrance; memorial"). From root <i>*mer</i>: Serbo-Croatian <i>mariti</i> "to care for;" Welsh <i>marth</i> "sadness, anxiety;" Old English <i>gemimor</i> "known," <i>murnan</i> "mourn, remember sorrowfully."</p>
<p>A life in moments; a timeline of formative memory.</p>
<p>(This is an experiment in story-telling that involves picking potent moments from each year of a character's life -- weaving narrative through tiny scenes and quotes. Companion piece to enviouspride's <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Inglorious/works/4733363">"In Perpetuity"</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the edge of words

**Author's Note:**

> This should be read after ["retrograde," ](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Inglorious/works/4681385) but doesn't need to be read before any of the other pieces in this series or collection. Please mind the warnings!

**9:19 Dragon**

“He’s the last,” his mother says as she still bleeds across the sheets. Even as he squalls and squirms against her chest, she insists. “The last. I will not do this again.”

 

**9:20 Dragon**

He’s a chubby, happy baby. Later, his mother will say that he used up all of his good-nature by the time he was three. _What I wouldn’t give to have that baby back_ , something she repeats again and again as if it is an invocation. Then, though, all she notices is the smell of his skin, how deeply he laughs – right down to his toes – and how he smiles most broadly just for her.

 

**9:21 Dragon**

His mother squeezes his hand as they walk through the market. He stares at the stands of fruit, bright as jewels, and reaches for them. She tugs his arm. _No, Leonid_ , words like a hand to his bottom. He stumbles, falls, knee scraped.

As he’s crying, one of the stall owners crouches by his side. Slices open an orange and offers him a section the colour of sunset. He doesn’t notice the woman’s ears, only that her hands are steady and they’re cool where they touch his knee. “Quiet, da’len. This will make everything better.”

When next they go to visit Leonid’s aunt, they take a different route.

 

**9:22 Dragon**

They spend all of August at their aunt’s estate on the river. Alla takes him fishing, which means she allows him to watch while she casts her line and reels in trout, flashes of silver beneath the water. He laughs and laughs as she brings one in, the fish dancing and flashing like it’s having fun.

When she smashes its head against the dock and it goes perfectly still, he starts to cry. When she slits it open and its guts fall out, the red of bloodstone and glistening wet, he sobs so hard he can’t breathe.

“Don’t be a baby, Lenya,” she says, although she rubs his back with her blood-smeared hands, silver scales flashing beneath her fingernails. “What do you think we _eat?_ ”

 

**9:23 Dragon**

Viktor’s mouth is a hard, downward line. “She should have known,” he says, hand heavy on Leonid’s shoulder. “Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.”

Leonid doesn’t understand how his cousin tried to rule anyone. He only remembers that she slept in his room when her family visited and she made the best funny faces and she never, ever got tired of playing hide and go seek with him in the gardens.

But Viktor must be right. Why else would the Maker take her away if it wasn’t for being very, very naughty?

 

**9:24 Dragon**

“Lenya, you _will_ stop wiggling during the Chantry service or we’ll practice at home. Would you like to kneel on rice? No, that’s what I thought. Now _sit still_.”

 

**9:25 Dragon**

Yuliya ducks under the tablecloth and lets it flutter shut. “Iona likes to pretend he’s all grown-up,” she whispers, “but he’s not.”

Leonid nods, because hating their brother is something they can share. He listens to the distant clinking of silverware, the murmur of quiet and polite conversation. “Did you want to see what’s in the cellar?”

She beats him down the stairs and turns every dusty pile of junk into something magnificent. A blanket becomes a swirling cape, a cracked plate transforms into a dwarven gear, a sagging portrait reveals itself to be Andraste’s secret text.

He wonders if the last one is a bad thing to pretend.

 

**9:26 Dragon**

“You’ve got a good mind,” says their tutor, leaning so close to Leonid that he can make out the blood vessels in the man’s eyes. “Don’t waste it. Now tell me: in what year did the Third Blight end?”

“When you were born,” says Leonid.

The backs of his hands hurt for the rest of the day.

 

**9:27 Dragon**

Iona leaves, and their tutor is thrilled and devastated. _He will make a fine archivist. The Chantry is lucky_.

Secretly, Leonid thinks _he’s_ lucky: Iona’s old room overlooks the street instead of the gardens. At night, he can open his window and listen to the sounds of people walking by. If he puts out all of the candles and stands very still, he can open the curtains and watch too. He never realized that Ostwick had so many people he didn’t know. Almost no one who passes by goes to the same chantry as the Trevelyans; he’s seen hardly _any_ of them at dinner parties. There must be a _thousand_ people he doesn’t know – at least.

The realization makes him feel very small, but also infinitely large. As though the whole city lives beneath his skin and is hungry to get out.

 

**9:28 Dragon**

Yuliya cries until her throat is raw, her pink dress crinkled from where her fists have been clenching the fabric, and Leonid decides to kill Olivar – even though Leonid is ten and the other boy is thirteen. He breaks Olivar’s nose, right in the middle of the dance floor. Blood gets on Leonid’s clothes, and it’s that – thinking of the blood on his shirt, thinking of it drying on his knuckles– that makes him cry when he’s in his bed at night. Not what his parents did after.

 

**9:29 Dragon**

His father stands him in front of the weapons rack. “Choose,” he says, gruff.

It is one of the only times Leonid has ever been alone with him. He swallows. His stomach is unsettled. Across the yard, Alla stands inside the practice ring, swinging her blade again and again and again, her wild hair stuck to her temple and curling as heat rises off of her body.

He points to a bow, one leaning against the end – an afterthought. “That one,” he says.

His father never needs to say he’s disappointed. Leonid knows, and it makes him love the bow even more.

 

**9:30 Dragon**

When Yuliya goes, he doesn’t cry, even though he can feel the tears at the back of his throat. Instead, Leonid sits alone in his room staring out his window. The sunset that night is so red, it makes the city look like it’s on fire.

 

**9:31 Dragon**

“You’re the youngest,” his mother says, forehead creased. Leonid perches on the edge of the chaise in his aunt’s front parlour while she powders her skin upstairs. The room smells like cabbage.

She continues, as if he doesn’t understand. “Without her inheritance, you _will_ be destitute. Do you understand? Viktor and Alla will inherit. Iona and Yuliya have the Chantry and their service. We never planned on a fifth child. You need your aunt, so _behave_ , Lenya.”

He hates his mother. He hates his aunt. He bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood, but he smiles the whole time just the same.

 

**9:32 Dragon**

He sees the man at the Satinalia ball, face half-hidden behind a black mask. Still, his eyes glitter – dark as shadow – and his skin smells like smoke and honey when he catches Leonid’s hand and draws him into a curtained alcove.

“I can be wicked,” Leonid says, breath caught in his throat. The man is quiet, watching him as though Leonid is the entire world.

Leonid believes it, but he’s wrong. He doesn’t even know what wicked is – yet.

 

**9:33 Dragon**

“You’re different,” says Yuliya, when she’s home for First Day. She’s broad-shouldered and serious now, and her eyes move right past him. She and Alla spend most of their time discussing weapons or sparring in the yard. Iona and Viktor hide away with rare books and tall candles and stacks of parchment for translation.

Leonid sneaks brandy into his room and waits for a knock at the window.

 

**9:34 Dragon**

“It’s alright if it hurts. It’s better if it does – just keep _breathing_ , Lenya.”

Then, “You are the rarest of creatures.” A hand pushing through his hair, hard. A thumb against the shape of his jaw.

He understands what wicked is. He keeps breathing.

 

**9:35 Dragon**

_Seventeen and still the most beautiful boy in the city._

The lies are snares that tangle and knot inside of his heart. He thinks he might die, but then –

_It’s too lovely a night, and far too handsome a face, for that look, precious._

 

**9:36 Dragon**

There’s a body in the water, and Leonid’s life falls apart. Or maybe it’s always been in pieces, and he’s only just realizing that now.

 

**9:37 Dragon**

_Lenya, I’m off to Kirkwall. I’ve only just completed my vigil, but the Order needs me._

He expects to never hear from Yuliya again. Leonid tells himself he doesn’t care, but it’s only when her next letter arrives that he realizes he’s been holding his breath the whole time.

 

**9:38 Dragon**

“How could you bring that _beast_ here,” his mother hisses at him, hauling him into the shadow of the servant’s hallway.

He smiles at her. Flutters his eyelashes. “I told him I’d make him come so hard that he’d black out. After that, he said he’d follow me just about anywhere. Amazing, that.”

The sailor is escorted from the dinner party, his parents’ guests staring after his pointed ears with wide eyes. Leonid follows, slings an arm around the man’s shoulders, and sighs happily. “Thank you. That was _perfect_. Now, shall we find somewhere private?”

 

**9:39 Dragon**

It’s his birthday and he’s drunk. Leonid walks by the harbour, air licking at his exposed skin, wet and salty. He stares out across the sea, squinting at the blackness. He pretends he doesn’t still see the imagined ghost of Alec’s corpse – a flash of pale skin under waters still winter-dark, even in Drakonis. Like a fish twisting and flashing in the deeps.

He thinks about blood on his knuckles. He thinks about bruises he never wanted, but let happen anyway. He thinks about Alec’s smile.

He thinks about how cold the water would be.

Leonid stumbles home.

 

**9:40 Dragon**

“Your aunt won’t see you. She says you’ve become _common_. The _hair_ and the _tattoos_ and the _company_ , Lenya. She might have understood if you made an effort, if you’d grown _out_ of it –”

He smiles at her. When he speaks, the words taste like ash. “Don’t call me Lenya, Mother. I’ve never been that dear to you.”

His father is clear: either he makes the journey to the Conclave and _adequately_ and _respectfully_ represents the Trevelyan name, or he can consider himself disowned. “You will be a decent member of this family,” says his father, voice a rumble like distant thunder, “or you will not be a member of this family at all.”

 

**9:41 Dragon**

He’s late. Holed up in a tavern in Amaranthine for too many days while he braces himself for the reality of _negotiations_ in a conflict too large for him to fathom.

It’s being drunk in a filthy tavern and taking an extra day to shake off the hangover that does it. That’s what separates him from the thousands who were killed – his vices. That’s what saves his life.

The Herald smiles, points toward a waiting Qunari, before slipping back inside the Chantry to attend to other pressing matters. Impossibly blue eyes meet Leonid’s across the muddy little road. Basten approaches with a smile brighter than the sun glinting off new snow, offering a steady hand that grips Leonid’s own in greeting. “Well,” Leonid says, “It would appear we’re bound for _greatness_.” That’s what saves the rest of him.

 

 


End file.
